Maybe Pinker has come down with a touch of Russell's Syndrome: the condition that gives so many intelligent atheists a case of the stupids when they start talking about religion. Or perhaps Pinker is only interested in convincing his fellow east- and west-coast academics.

Scientism and materialism have led to a gradual drying up of poetry, myths and sacred narratives - and hence a thinning of meaning and flattening of emotion. I suspect, if the next three centuries are as rough as scientists tell us they will be, we will need stories, ones that give us hope and purpose even in the face of mass extinctions.